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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23858047">lighter looks the gloomy eye</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray'>MercuryGray</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Mercy Street (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Accidental Baby Acquisition, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:01:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,242</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23858047</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing in the regulations about what to do with abandoned babies.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Emma Green/Henry Hopkins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>lighter looks the gloomy eye</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Each passing clown bestows his blessing,<br/>Thy mouth is worn with old wives’ kissing;<br/><b>E’en lighter looks the gloomy eye</b><br/>Of surly sense when thou art by;<br/>And yet, I think, whoe’er they be,<br/>They love thee not like me.<br/><i>-Joanna Baillie, A Mother To Her Waking Infant</i></p><p>Originally published on Tumblr, February 2017</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The baby arrived in a box.<b><br/>
</b></p><p>It was an altogether ordinary looking box - a packing crate for army biscuit, stamped and lettered for the same, one of a hundred  thousand currently in Alexandria. But for all its ordinary qualities, it did not help the staff of Mansion House with the question they wanted most to know - exactly where the child had come from.</p><p>It had appeared on Monday morning on the hospital’s back step. No one could say how long it had been there, though Abe swore up and down that it hadn’t been there when he’d locked the door for the night, and Sam had nearly tripped over it when he’d come in the morning to start the fires for breakfast.</p><p>However, everyone could agree on one thing - that the box’s occupant had not appreciated being jostled awake at so early an hour.</p><p>“Can’t you make it stop?” Anne asked waspishly, as the wail reached new and plaintive heights. “Surely at some point it has to run out of air?”</p><p>“I expect the poor thing is hungry,” Mary said, balancing the baby at her shoulder and trying to soothe it with a series of unsure pats on its back. “Matron has gone for milk and sugar and will be back directly.”</p><p>“Will someone shut that thing up?” Hale roared from an upper floor - an interjection that only made ‘that thing’ wail all the harder in distress. Mary ignored him and took the screaming infant out of the hall, through  and into the back garden, its unhappy cries unceasing, even in the warmth of the sun and the smell of the lindens and  boxwoods. The contrabands on laundry duty all shifted uncomfortably, watching the Head Nurse bounce back and forth, trying to find some method of calm that might stop the crying.</p><p>“Here we are,” Matron Brannan finally appeared, equipped with a pan of warmed milk, soaking a cloth in the pan so it was dripping wet and holding it to the squalling mouth, tracing at his lips so he might find the taste. “See how you like that.” Behind her, in the doorway, Emma hung back, watching the proceedings with tenative interest. She’d only just arrived from home when the screaming had started, and Matron had grabbed her arm and dragged her downstairs so she might help her locate the sugar in the darkness of the kitchen. (It was probably a testament to the baby’s lung power that Abe did not stop or chide them for invading his preserve - even he could see the value in shutting up a tired, hungry child.)</p><p>The infant gummed fitfully on the fold of the napkin, finally taking in the liquid and relaxing a little as he nursed. “He’s a tiny wee thing,” Matron observed, as one hand escaped his wrapper, the arm thin. “Far too small to be away from his ma.”</p><p>“I think we may well assume his mother didn’t want him,” Mary said, tucking the arm back inside. “I feel like I’ve seen this shawl before.”</p><p>“Visiting a patient?” Matron asked, agast.</p><p>“At the clinic,” the head nurse clarified. Brannan’s mouth formed a silent understanding. The women who came to Mansion House were a sporadic and transient lot, here one week and gone the next two, with some stopping their visits altogether for reasons their colleagues did not like to speculate about. It was a near certainty that this little fellow had come from one of them - a woman who (when older, more certain methods had failed her beforehand) had given her child up to someone she thought might treat him better than she could. Alexandria had, as of recently, no orphanage, nor convent or charitable society at which the box could have been dropped - and so he had been left at Mansion House, to fend for himself tucked into an old crate with his mother’s shawl for warmth.</p><p>“Miss Phinney, you’re wanted upstairs.” Miss Hastings looked at the child and tried to refrain from frowning. “Doctor Foster requires the head nurse.”</p><p>“Go,” Matron said. “Miss Green can take the child.”</p><p>“I can?” Emma said, but it was too late  - Mary gestured for her to come closer and then suddenly her arms were full of noisy, sucking child. She had the sudden, terrifying sensation she might drop him, and held on tighter. Were all children this heavy?</p><p>“Support his head,” Matron cut in, and Emma struggled for a moment to realize what she meant, trying to juggle the child and his attached milky napkin all at once. She did not succeed, at least directly, and the older woman chuckled. “You’ve not had much experience with youngsters, I take it, Miss Green?”</p><p>“I’ve had… a little,” Emma said, trying to dust off her injured pride. “My cousins are all married with children, and I’ve …held all of them.” Coming out of her mouth, it sounded rather feeble.</p><p>“And nursemaids do the rest, I expect?” Brannan asked pointedly. Emma blanched and would not meet her eye. “Take them away when they’re crying, or soiled?” She laughed at Emma’s silence. “You’re in for a rare treat, then. We’ll start -” she took an experimental sniff of his bottom half - “with a lesson in the fine art of changing nappies.”</p><p>—</p><p>Ten minutes later, washed, dried, and at the expense of one of Miss Green’s aprons and a great deal of her pride and dignity, the baby was once more properly attired and, it seemed, a little happier for it, and the soiled article had been dispatched to the laundry.</p><p>She had been left to her own devices with the child after Mary had departed for the upper floors and the day’s work had forced Brannan to follow. Anne’s views on the child were well-known, and she was doubtful any of the nuns would take her place - so it seemed she was to be alone in this for the rest of the day.</p><p>And the prospect did not bother her. Emma was growing used to this tiny human being curled into her body, the smell of the crown of his head and the tiny wisps of hair that floated, unsure, on the soft expanse of his skin. She’d held up a finger and the tiny hand had taken hold like a drowning man clinging to an oar, as if he, too, did not want to be let go of again.</p><p>Emma hadn’t thought overlong on Mansion House’s clinic patients, the painted ladies of the docks and the back alleys who came in once or twice a week. She knew what they were, and what they did for their money, a prospect that filled her with dread when they smiled over her and cooed about her lovely eyes, her pretty hair. “If you ever get tired of nursing, dear,” they’d say with a smile. “I’m sure whatever they pay you ain’t much.” “And goes to your husband’s pocket besides.” “You’d be a free woman.” Free! What sort of freedom was that, when you were doing - she wasn’t sure she could call it work, but they did - that could and would leave you sick, or disfigured, or - the most natural consequence of all.  But she was sure those women weren’t thinking of such things when they’d begun. Obviously this one’s mother hadn’t.</p><p>She was given a wide berth for the remainder of the day, her unspoken orders to do whatever it took to keep the child quiet and amused while some plan was made for his eventual departure. It was a very itinerant existence - finding that he enjoyed being walked about, the rest of her day devolved into a long, winding walk from room to room, and she saw Mansion House differently than she’d ever seen it before.</p><p>There was no medicine quite like a baby. Men who had lain listless in bed tried to sit up as she passed by, and solemn old gray heads who usually grumbled at the slightest breeze begged for a chance to play peek-a-boo. More than a few fathers, far away from their own children, asked to be given a chance to hold him, speaking in nonsense syllables and bouncing him up and down until one or another of the doctors appeared and called for order on the ward and Emma took the baby back and went away.  A bottle was found to replace the toweling he’d taken his first meal with that morning, and he was pronounced a robust appetite by Matron Brannan, who insisted, at lunchtime, on doing the honor of feeding him.</p><p>For a day spent doing nothing of substance, it was certainly a tiring one. Eventually she sought solace in a chair in the hallway, half-napping as the baby did the same. She’d be expected home for dinner soon, and there was no prescribed change of shifts for nurses looking after orphaned baby boys.</p><p>“You look very comfortable there.” Emma looked up from her contemplation to find the Chaplain smiling down at the two of them. She smiled at the compliment and sat up a little straighter so the baby could see Henry’s face.</p><p>“What’s his name?” Henry asked, sitting down next to her and smiling as he made eye contact with the tiny dark eyes. The baby peered owlishly back, his own little mouth curling tentatively into a smile as he watched Henry do the same. Emma watched the exchange with fascination, quite forgetting that he’d asked a question until Henry’s gaze turned back to her.</p><p>“He…he hasn’t got one,” she managed. It was strange - in the rush of the day no one had asked for it.  “They…didn’t leave a note.”</p><p>“God hasn’t left you with much at all, young man. No name, no family and no home,” Henry mused, offering his own finger to the child, the two locked in a silent conversation of smiles and wide eyes that left Emma’s heart aching. It was strange, how a baby seemed to show people for how they really were - Brannan had become sweet and motherly, Mary unsure, Anne and Hale uneasy, Foster remote and Henry - Henry was sitting far closer than was polite, she was sure, though she did not find she minded. (Indeed, she found the feeling of his leg, his whole body, alongside hers was rather to be wished for, and she longed for the closeness between them to close.)</p><p>“We should give him one.” Henry’s voice startled Emma again. “A name,” he clarified, smiling apologetically at her. “Do you think Dr. Foster would mind the compliment? He is by rights in charge of the hospital.”</p><p>“My family names boys after their fathers,” she said with a shrug. “People ….might assume.”</p><p>The Chaplain agreed with her unease at this prospect, and thought again. “The city, then - since it’s where he was found. Alexander. Sure not to offend anyone, as it is neither Northern nor Southern at the moment.”</p><p>“Alexander,” she said, trying it out on her tongue. “It’s a big name for such a small boy - but he could be Alex for short.” The baby turned his head towards the sound, and she smiled again at him, though he did not smile back this time, eyes drooping. The day had finally worn him out. “I think he knows, now.”</p><p>“Has he some place to sleep tonight?” Henry asked, letting Emma rise carefully from their bench, mindful not to wake the baby.</p><p>“Matron’s airing out his box. She’s said she’ll watch him, and hopefully the officers from the Welfare Society will be here in the morning.”</p><p>Henry nodded, pleased at this development, and for a minute the two of them watched him, clearly fighting sleep. Suddenly Henry smiled at some remembered joke. “What is this? his eyes are heavy; think not they are glazed with wine. Go to him, it is thy duty, kiss him, take his hand in thine.”</p><p>The poetry, spoken with such tenderness, took her aback a minute. “What’s that?”</p><p>“Locksley Hall. Tennyson, I think. ” He swallowed, thinking of something else a moment, and then remembering himself. “Well, I’ll say good night, Miss Green.” And, in a different voice, softer and with infinite care -  “Good night, little Alexander. God bless you.” He touched the top of Alex’s head with a tender hand, and, quite by rote, it seemed, stepped closer into Emma’s orbit and kissed the crown of the baby’s head, remaining, for what seemed eternity, paused over the child in silent prayer, his face close to hers, his sleeve brushing her dress. When his head rose again, Emma found her heart pounding in her chest, her whole body expecting, hoping, for one brief moment, that there might also be a kiss for her.</p><p>“Good night, chaplain,” she remembered to say, when she’d found her voice again, and hoped she did not sound disappointed.</p><p>That night, after the baby had been deposited at the bedside of the Matron, safe in his crate again, and Emma had returned home to try and explain to her mother why she smelled of sour milk, she paused in the library, pulling down the heavy volume of Tennyson, tracing through the verses with her finger, her heart catching in her breast.</p><p>
  <em>And she turn'd—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Saying, “I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong”;</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Saying, “Dost thou love me, cousin?” weeping, “I have loved thee long.”</em>
</p>
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